Posts by BenWilson
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Regarding the LOTR racial politics hoopla, the Warcraft universe does a decent job of muddying the waters of traditional Tolkiendom.
Indeed. It's actually quite fascinating how they managed to engender racial hatred into the game. The Alliance and the Horde can't directly communicate, they can only emote.
Legolas was shooting blanks.
True, true, I forgot that. They could adopt, though. Maybe a little orc baby stolen from one of their victims?
Ooh, can I contribute some Tolkien-geekery?
Even Iluvatar himself could not stop you. In fact, as per Melkor, he'd just claim that it was what he was trying to say all along.
-
But at some point, you have to accept that some things actually *are* artistically 'better' than other things.
No, I don't.
-
No, Gio, I'm not saying that.
-
Legolas and Gimli wanted to have babies, but disagreed about whether it should be raised in a forest or a cave.
-
Yes, and in none of those cases did I say it was "Wrong to hate Avatar". I don't think there is a right or wrong to the matter. Hence I say, you are projecting.
-
See? You're doing it again! You're saying that I was wrong in not liking Avatar, because my not liking it involved using critical skills that are either misplaced or not worthwhile to employ.
No, you're projecting that onto me.
Whereas from where I'm sitting it's simply a matter of having found Avatar awful and being willing to back it up with argument - an argument which is in turn open to being accepted or rejected on its merits.
There's been "arguments" both ways, and of course everything in them boils down to subjective opinion of artistic worth. After a while it moves from anything resembling argument, to cheerleading. I think this happened months ago, wrt Avatar.
-
BenWilson: any other candidates for finest century? I'm tempted to balance the odd bout of industrialised mass homicide with antibiotics, civil rights, reproductive freedom and plummetting infant mortality.
Yes, the ends did justify the means. Horrible means. Good ends.
Re: Uruk Hai, IIRC Tolkien is quite unspecific about exactly how Saruman makes them. I think someone (Aragorn maybe?) speculates that they are part man, part orc. So Jackson's guess is as good as anyone's. Reproduction is generally not discussed frankly in LOTR anywhere.
-
Curse the people who think too much! Really? FFS.
Again, not at all. You're most welcome to rail against Avatar until the day you die, dissecting it at thesis length if that seems like a worthwhile thing to do. I hope that I'm welcome to disagree? For the record, about the last time that you did this, with respect to the Matrix, I also disagreed. I thought it was a good film, watched it again immediately. I also eat parmesan cheese that tastes of old socks, and I don't like romantic musical comedies. Pizza, to me, always has pineapples.
I fear that the powerful cultural cringe might interfere with the aircraft navigation systems.
You underrate the NZ immunity to cultural cringe. We've been vaccinated from birth, mostly.
-
Dear Lord. The hostility to criticism in this thread is reaching truly heroic proportions.
Not at all. I'm merely criticizing the critic. Don't be so hostile. Oh, hang on, you're criticizing the critic's critic, right? That's all right then.
YOU SHALL NOT CRITICISE!
I can feel the thongs of some whippy wit pulling me into the pointless chasm of literary rebuttal as I type...."Fly, you fools!"
-
we can certainly include Mr Downie amongst the overthinkers and, how shall I put it, general idiots.
Dunno. He seems to have thought about the book far longer than most people would take to read it. Good on him for hating on it so deeply, someone's got to do it. His casting of Jackson as New Zealand's Saruman follows a dramatic arc strangely similar to the movie he deconstructs, however. I hope when he writes his own masterpiece, it isn't so derivative, and uses less turgid prose, more dialog, less two dimensional characterizations, and gains the zero audience he so reveres.
flashing neon text that you're reading a book by a profoundly conservative child of the Victorian age who regarded the 20th century with slack-jawed horror
Well, I don't think it was humanity's finest century myself, but slack-jawed horror is perhaps overstating things. Some aspects of the 20th century horrified him, much as they horrify others, and they still horrify me. I find it almost hard to believe a lot of the shit that happened, and I hope I don't have to live through anything like it.
Last ←Newer Page 1 … 778 779 780 781 782 … 1066 Older→ First